Monthly Archives: October 2008

Junk Mail Catch

In clearing out my junk mail folder, I discovered a message from Liturgical Training Press. It seems they’re offering 25% off your next purchase if you’re willing to sign up on their email list. Given all the v1@gra spam I have to wade through anyway, a note from a press I actually like seems a small price to pay for a nice discount…and I thought some of you might feel the same.

Of course—I don’t know if this extends to the allied Cistercian Press or not, but if it does, it’ll make me even happier!

The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it

Hie thee over to the Byzantine Anglo-Catholic’s place for a fascinating post on the Camaldolese order and their spirituality. I’m stealing from there the entirity of the Brief Rule left by their founder.

Brief Rule

Sit in your cell as in paradise.
Put the whole world behind you and forget it.
Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish.
The path you must follow is in the Psalms–never leave it.
If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of
your good will, you cannot accomplish what you want,
take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart
and to understand them with your mind.
And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up;
hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.
Realize above all that you are in God’s presence, and stand there
with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.
Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God,
like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.

A REAL “Listening Process”

Christopher has a nice post up on his take on my previous post.

I want all the bishops and archbishops who read my blog to sit up and pay close attention now.

It struck me as I read through it that “this here” is the vaunted listen process. It’s about people sharing how they do family and do life in the sight of God.

A listening process doesn’t happen when strangers with pre-determined decisions show up in a room and argue for a couple of hours. A listening process doesn’t happen when a large organization comes and has a “conversation” which is a monologue wherein a particular view is shoved down everyone’s throat.

A listening process means sharing the realities of our mundane lives and exploring whether and how God is at work in and through them–listening for the footsteps of God in the midst of life. And noting where we fall into moments or patterns of sin where love is denied or distorted.

A listening process is listening to Christopher talk about the daily realities and ups and downs of family life. A listening process is getting to know bls’s take on art, music, and the events of the day. And about listening and discerning what’s there as well as what’s going on with Chris and Jessicah, Caelius, LP and Mrs. LP, the Postulant and his M, me and my M. (See how inclusive we are here? We’ll even listen to Lutherans! :-D) This is the heart of it–not talking “about gay people”–but talking to and hearing from people–friends–married, partnered, single, dating, talking about the realities of their lives and recognizing the presence of both God and sin in each and all.

The sad reality, of course, is that this will not be recognized. Activist will struggle against activist. The shrillest voices with the keenest pitches will be the “listening process”. Talking poinst will be weighed against talking points and none will be persuaded. So sad—what a mess…

Teaching Men about Women’s Issues: Home Edition

1950’s paradigm: Man goes off and earns the paycheck; woman stays at home and does the child-rearing and housework.

200X paradigm: Man goes off and earns a paycheck; woman goes off and earns a paycheck. oh btw…woman gets to do the child-rearing and housework too…

M and I don’t consider ourselves awfully progressive. In fact, on a lot of things, we’re quite conservative. When we got married, though, we discussed that we saw ourselves as part of a team and that household chores should be split in ways that make sense. I’ve always tried to be an active dad, and when G was little stayed home and watched her mornings and worked in the evenings. Furthermore we worked on the input-output rule: M breastfed so I changed all the diapers. I still change a lot even though the breastfeeding days are long over and H’s diaper days are drawing to a happy end.

With M going to work, I’m the at-home parent since my commute is to my office in the basement. Since our schedule is currently arranged so that M works out in the mornings before work I’m:

  • waking the girls
  • making four breakfasts
  • packing three lunches
  • dressing 2 girls
  • taking 1 girl (G) to the bus stop
  • cleaning the  kitchen.

Then my “real” day starts with spreadsheets, coding etc…
[Insert laundry here as I work near the washer & dryer]
Come lunch-time…

  • sneak in a run
  • plan dinner
  • start dinner prep

Then it’s back to the spreadsheets until:

  • pick up G from bus
  • finish cooking dinner

sometimes in the midst of spreadsheets. I was dicing onions during a conference call the other day…

Then after dinner it’s:

  • clean kitchen
  • help G with homework
  • put girls to bed.

Is this lifestyle what they had in mind with “women’s liberation”?!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining; this is just what we have to do to make sure everything moves steady. Nor am I listing all of the stuff that M is doing—so please don’t think for a minute that she’s slacking or that I’m accusing her of it. Far from it!

Rather, it’s opening my eyes to the assumptions that we men tend to make about who does what and how we contribute to the household. And, it’s making me realize that M has been doing far more than I’d ever guess while I work away.

So—thank you, M!! And the rest of you guys with households–get off your butts and lend a hand… ;-)

 FYI, today’s run will become a literal run to the grocery store to pick up a couple of missing ingredients for dinner. I’m shooting for butternut squash risotto with balsamic marinated chicken and brocolli. Feel free to stop by—and bring a fork… :-)

Random MP Thought

On running across this section of Ps 103…:

For look how high the heaven is in comparison of the earth; *
so great is his mercy also toward them that fear him.
Look how wide also the east is from the west; *
so far hath he set our sins from us.
Yea, like as a father pitieth his own children; *
even so is the LORD merciful unto them that fear him.
For he knoweth whereof we are made; *
he remembereth that we are but dust.
The days of man are but as grass; *
for he flourisheth as a flower of the field.
For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone; *
and the place thereof shall know it no more.
But the merciful goodness of the LORD endureth for ever and ever upon them that fear him; *
and his righteousness upon children’s children;

…I’m reminded of something I first noticewd when studying the psalms appointed to follow the  Gen 1 reading in the Easter Vigil. I was originally puzzled about the selection of the bits of Psalms 33 and 36 when there are other psalms that seem to me more explicitly focused on creation (like, say, Ps 104!). Why these? 

In looking over these over, I noticed a feature which appears here as well. These psalms aren’t just about creation and the created world. Rather, they’re using creation as a physical model to give us a sense of the breath, height, and depth of the virtues of God.  The vast expanses of creation, the pairings of finitude and infinity are invoked in order to describe the moral characteristics of God and of God’s inordinate love.

Hatin’ on the NRSV

This weekend’s Gospel foregrounds one of my pet peeves about the NRSV; it’s translations can be down-right misleading in ways that obscure some fascinating stuff. In this Sunday’s reading they fooled around with Matt 22:20 in a way that covers up a great sacramental reading of the story.

NRSV: ‘Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”’

 

 

KJV: ‘And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?’

NIV: ‘and he asked them, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?”‘

The Greek word variously translated as ‘head”, “image” and “portrait” is eikon–the same word from whence we get the word “icon”. I much prefer the translation “image”. In a similar way, the second is epigrammata. “Inscription” works fine in my book. The problem is that the NRSV attempts to give a precision that is not present in the original. As a result, it closes off the possibilities for readings that are available with the other (better) translations. Preeminently, it obscures the fact that the word really is image, something that I think factors theological in Jesus’ retort. The coin made with the image of Casar belongs to Caesar—however the human beings made in the image of God belong to God! Especially if those humans have been marked with an inscription—like, say, a cross upon the forehead—the sealing of baptism.

I think that’s a sacramentally rich reading of the passage—but one completely hidden by the NRSV.

To the Farmer-In-Chief

bls points us to this article in the NY Times magazine–a letter from Michael Pollan to the next president. The whole thing is worth a read and here are some juicy excerpts to whet your appetite…:

There are many moving parts to the new food agenda I’m urging you to adopt, but the core idea could not be simpler:we need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine. True, this is easier said than done — fossil fuel is deeply implicated in everything about the way we currently grow food and feed ourselves. To put the food system back on sunlight will require policies to change how things work at every link in the food chain: in the farm field, in the way food is processed and sold and even in the American kitchen and at the American dinner table. Yet the sun still shines down on our land every day, and photosynthesis can still work its wonders wherever it does. If any part of the modern economy can be freed from its dependence on oil and successfully resolarized, surely it is food.

. . .

We emptied America’s rural counties in order to supply workers to urban factories. To put it bluntly, we now need to reverse course. We need more highly skilled small farmers in more places all across America — not as a matter of nostalgia for the agrarian past but as a matter of national security. For nations that lose the ability to substantially feed themselves will find themselves as gravely compromised in their international dealings as nations that depend on foreign sources of oil presently do. But while there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food.

. . .

Changing the food culture must begin with our children, and it must begin in the schools. Nearly a half-century ago, President Kennedy announced a national initiative to improve the physical fitness of American children. He did it by elevating the importance of physical education, pressing states to make it a requirement in public schools. We need to bring the same commitment to “edible education” — in Alice Waters’s phrase — by making lunch, in all its dimensions, a mandatory part of the curriculum. On the premise that eating well is a critically important life skill, we need to teach all primary-school students the basics of growing and cooking food and then enjoying it at shared meals.

To change our children’s food culture, we’ll need to plant gardens in every primary school, build fully equipped kitchens, train a new generation of lunchroom ladies (and gentlemen) who can once again cook and teach cooking to children. We should introduce a School Lunch Corps program that forgives federal student loans to culinary-school graduates in exchange for two years of service in the public-school lunch program. And we should immediately increase school-lunch spending per pupil by $1 a day — the minimum amount food-service experts believe it will take to underwrite a shift from fast food in the cafeteria to real food freshly prepared.  

These last points are vital. We need to teach our children about gardening, cooking, and food in general. We’re trying at home, but school reinforcement is always good. I’ve been looking quite seriously at these resources recently at the National Gardening Association’s site and have been wondering what it would take to get an organic gardening/composting project started at Lil’ G’s school.